The vampire boom may be drawing to a close according to some publishing pundits.

But if you scan through the posts in many reader forums, the bloodsuckers with the looks of an Angelina Jolie or a Johnny Depp are still attracting hosts of readers (mainly female).

These paranormal romantic vampires tend to be extensions of Mills & Boon type heroes and heroines – square jawed, sensitive, rakish, seductive and so on. Not like ‘real’ vampires at all.

Some time back I read that true vampires in the mould of Vlad The Impaler and other ‘families’ in certain parts of Eastern Europe where the vampire myths originated were actually suffering from a form of congenital haemophilia – which would explain a lot if true.

Today’s fictional vampire has become an iconic stereotype, albeit a hugely successful one as series such as ‘The Hunger Games’ proves beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But, are publishers becoming disenchanted with the fangs and the undead? If not, just what is the attraction? Have there ever been any disgustingly ugly, dissolute, savage and brutal vampire heroes and heroines in popular fiction? Or are the undead only seductively attractive because they perform an esoteric form ofr rape – sucking the life blood in an agony of pleasurable excitement.

5 Responses to Are vampires dead and buried – permanently?

I dunno to be honest, personally I do not think that vampires nowadays look anywhere like Angelina Jolie or Johnny Depp-at least not Edward Cullen nor any of the other Cullens look like Johnny Depp, and Bella does not look anywhere near Angelina Jolie. Though as to answer your question, yes stories/movies that have anything to do with the ‘normal’ Vlad the Impaler or Dracula I think-now and for the future are probably long since ‘dead’ unless the writers behind these things ‘like’ the ‘normal’ Vlad the Impaler/Dracula. I quite like the ‘normal’ Dracula legend myself-the best movies to me being “Dracula” with Gary Oldman-quite a bloody brilliant actor and “Dracula 2000” was a great film as well with Gerard Butler as Dracula-I liked the twist they added to that plot-that Judas Iscariot was a vampire-it made sense within the plot of the movie! I think there are way too many stories/movies of this sort nowadays more like the sparkling love romance “Twilight” series which make dunces out of it’s readers most of which are young females-in their teens and whatnot. To add a point-I noticed you said too many Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp look alikes-and upon reading just the prologue for your book and seeing the cover, “An Angel on my Shoulder,” I must say-I think that novel could become a really good movie-after being written into a script and…Robert Downey Jr. would be a perfect fit for the role of Paul-he kind of looks like the character of Paul on the cover!

Oh a few things to add on…I think the attraction for authors/filmmakers to continue to make these kinds of books/films is “popularity.” They know it will be popular to the ‘younger’ generations and they make things where they will make the most money-and unfortunately that is a sad thing. 😦 Oh the other great series though is “Underworld,” and simply because of Kate Beckinsale and Bill Nighy-the looks are also so different than the sparkly pure romance Cullens which get very lame after a long time!

Funny you wrote about this. I’m a vampire author who has been on many convention panels over the years discussing this topic.

Yes, in terms of the large publishing houses, there is a bit of a decline in vampire fiction, but there is still many places, such as Harlequin’s Nocturn titles, where Paranormal Romance is considered a genre of it’s own.

Small publishing houses and self-publishers still do well with vampire novels, but the real issue is the evolution of the vampire in literature.

I’m of the firm belief that vampire fiction is a genre of its own, with its own subgenres. This allowes for the spectrum of the vampire to be still horrific to the newly romantic. Then again, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was, and still is, sexy.